String of radar stations in Canadian Arctic nearly obsolete — and modernizing them will cost billions

The Canadian government will need to spend billions of dollars modernizing the North Warning System, including this site in Cambridge Bay, Nunavet. The radar installations will be obsolete in 2025.David Pugliese

CAMBRIDGE BAY, Nunavut — The white domes that rise from the tundra look innocuous enough, and yet they play a critical role in protecting millions of Canadians and Americans thousands of kilometres away.

Inside, where photographs are forbidden, they are like a time capsule from the late 1980s, the décor still reflecting the late Cold War era when the Canadian and U.S. governments established the North Warning System, the chain of mostly unmanned radar sites of which the Cambridge Bay facility is a part. Spanning Canada’s northern coastline across the Yukon, Northwest Territories, Nunavut and Labrador, the radar sites exist to detect potential threats entering North America’s airspace, transmitting a stream of data to military command centres in the south.

At the Cambridge Bay site, dozens of civilian contractors — employees of Raytheon Canada — work around the clock to keep the installation operating in temperatures that can dip to -60 C in January or February. At times during the winter, Arctic storms almost completely cover some of the sites in snow, requiring contractors to climb through hatches in the roofs of the buildings to conduct maintenance work.

But the North Warning System now faces a threat greater than the harsh Arctic environment. In seven years the radar system is expected to be obsolete. The Canadian and U.S. governments are trying to figure out how to upgrade the radars for modern times — opening the door that the sensors could be plugged in to the Pentagon’s missile defence system as well as be modernized so they can track a new generation of Russian cruise missiles.

Canada and the U.S. are trying to figure out technological improvements for the early warning system and are in the midst of discussions on the topic. A joint study on continental defence is expected to be finished by next year, Department of National Defence spokesman Dan Le Bouthillier told Postmedia. “Following the completion of the study, Canada and the United States will determine the next steps for the replacement of the NWS and update the project timelines accordingly,” he added.

But that could emerge as yet another point of contention between Canada and the Trump administration in the U.S., which has already admonished Canada for not spending enough on defence.

Negotiating with the Trump administration is going to be a lot different than with the Reagan government

The last time the U.S. and Canada modernized the radar system was during the tenure of U.S. President Ronald Reagan, when relations between the two nations were on a solid footing.

“Negotiating with the Trump administration is going to be a lot different than with the Reagan government,” explained defence analyst Martin Shadwick. “Trump will be the wild card.”

Shadwick said details about funding and what the radars need to do in the future could become sticking points.

The Liberal government has recognized it has to do something about what it calls the capability gaps in the North Warning System. “While the current NWS is approaching the end of its life expectancy from a technological and functional perspective, unfortunately the range of potential threats to the continent, such as that posed by adversarial cruise missiles and ballistic missiles, has become more complex and increasingly difficult to detect,” the government’s defence strategy, released last year, pointed out. But the Liberals did not include funding for the modernization of the NWS in that policy, saying it would come later.

Canada is currently responsible for 40 per cent of the cost of the North Warning System, with the remaining 60 per cent falling to the Americans. Canada owns the sites and provides the site operations and maintenance while the U.S. owns the radar and radio equipment.

Ernie Regehr, a senior fellow in Arctic security and defence at The Simons Foundation, has found that while the cost for upgrading the North Warning System is unknown at this time it can be expected to run into the billions of dollars.

Canada and the U.S. share the responsibility for a credible contribution to the defence of North America, Regehr pointed out. “And the American definition of credible is the one that counts,” he wrote in a March briefing for the Simons Foundation.

The Canadian government will need to spend billions of dollars modernizing the North Warning System, including this site in Cambridge Bay, Nunavet. The radar installations will be obsolete in 2025.David Pugliese /
Ottawa Citizen

As far back as 2013 Canadian defence officials were questioning where the money to upgrade the radars would come from. “How do we resource it?” officials asked in a September 2013 briefing note obtained by Postmedia.

There was no answer provided for senior government and military staff.

The 47 North Warning System sites were constructed between 1986 and 1992, replacing another set of radars, the Distant Early Warning Line, that had been built in the 1950s. At the time, the radars were designed to deal with Russian bombers approaching North America.

But the threat has changed, according to the U.S. and Canadian militaries. U.S. Gen. Lori Robinson, then head of the North American Aerospace Defence Command told American lawmakers March 21 that new generation Russian cruise missiles were now difficult to track, and while the likelihood of an attack is low, it is important to invest in advanced sensors to protect both Canada and the U.S.

Dealing with various threats could involve a complete reworking of the radar system. A DND strategy document produced in 2016 pointed out that more sensors are needed beyond what is already in the Arctic. “Replacing the North Warning System one-for-one would be ineffective against new threat vectors,” the document noted.

There have even been suggestions the locations of the sites might have to be changed. Canadian Lt.-Gen. Alain Parent told parliamentarians in March 2015 that the NWS “is not necessarily in the right place. Right now it does not cover the entirety of the Canadian sovereign territory.”

New technologies might provide a way to improve the surveillance system.

DND is investing $133 million over five years in what it calls the All Domain Situational Awareness Science and Technology Program. That will allow Canada to conduct research on ways to improve monitoring of not only what is approaching the country from the air but as well on and below the oceans, said DND spokeswoman Jessica Lamirande.

Such technologies could include radars that can scan long distances over the horizon or could possibly be space-based sensors, according to the 2016 DND strategy document.

In March the government put out a call to industry to work on what it is calling a polar over-the-horizon radar. Such a system would be able to outperform regular radar by detecting objects thousands of kilometres away.

On April 12, the federal government awarded a $2.7 million contract to researchers at the University of Waterloo to develop new quantum radar technology to improve the detection of objects, including missiles and stealth aircraft, in the Canadian Arctic. The work would involve using quantum illumination, which requires a high emission source of radar signals made of entangled photon pairs or single particles of light, according to the university. The quantum illumination would theoretically allow radar operators to cut through any interference and isolate objects, including those designed to avoid detection.

Jonathan Baugh, a professor at the university’s Institute of Quantum Computing, said the technique has been demonstrated in a lab but the defence department project aims to develop a device that can eventually be used in the field.

Still, he acknowledges, it could be years before such a system makes its way into the hands of the Canadian military.

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